MOCKINGJAY PEETA'S POV
by markwatney
Summary: We all know Katniss' story, but this is how it went in Peeta's mind from every single step of the way. I will be following each chapter of the books, and will do all three books. This is the third and final, Mockingjay! What actually goes on inside the boy with the breads head? Hope you enjoy, please read and review, I would really love it!
1. Chapter 1

**PART ONE: THE ASHES**

**CHAPTER ONE**

* * *

It starts with a drill.

My body has become used to that drill and what follows after it. At the first high-pitched noise, my skin starts to cover itself in goosebumps, raw and numb. My muscles tighten, reflectively, waiting.

Within a few seconds, they come in. People dressed in all white. I'd call them Peacekeepers except they don't act like them. They're bad doctors, I think to myself. The first thing they do is flatten my arm, which is already strapped down to the table along with the rest of my limbs. Then they inject a thick needle into a prominent vein.

Then my day begins.

I see distorted images, flashing and broken, flickering and wrong. They're of everything. The Games, Katniss, my family, my district. But mostly, it focuses on Katniss.

I'd see her face at first. It always started with her face. Her high and prominent cheekbones, the dark brown almost black hair tightly tied into that braid she always wore. Her olive skin that tanned so easily, her green eyes, bright like leaves on trees.

At the first injection, the day after I came here, I was glad to see her face. I was happy for whatever it was they were pumping into me, because it was a break from the monotonous four walls I'd already become tired of. The place where they'd leave me all day was nothing other than a small box with dreadful marks across the wall that I didn't want to think what they were. I spent all day looking at the ceiling of the room, unable to get up or move even a few inches. Each of my fingers were even strapped down to the metal bed, tied down by thin leather straps. I would pull against them, spending my pent up energy, but it was useless. I was weak and becoming malnourished.

They'd feed me, of course. But not enough, never enough. Through tubes and without utensils, barely able to swallow if I ever got the chance to. I felt thirsty despite the water they dripped through me. My throat and tongue felt dry and hoarse. It made my head hurt, brain banging against the bones of my skull. Bathroom breaks were scarce, too. I couldn't count the days or the hours very well in my shut-off, dark room, but I knew it was embarrassing how many times I'd soiled myself already. And forget showers, too. There were no rose-scented gels or steam dryers in this place. It was cold water hosing you down if you got too messy, or if you risked becoming ill at how dirty you became.

You felt guilty for that, even. For cold waters and food that would drip through you. The way that the bad doctors would look at you, as if you were taking something so precious and expensive from them. Like you weren't worth even the most basic of human needs.

So, of course seeing Katniss was nice. The painful injections that brought her to me were nothing. I knew that nothing I was seeing was real, because seeing Katniss was too good. Even when the illusions turned sour, it felt too good.

They started with trying to kill her. The images would show me her, beautiful and full, happy and glowing. I'd glow, too, I was sure of it. But then her face would distort, fear seeping through her pores and changing her expression.

One day, she'd just be murdered. Straight gone. She'd be there, smiling, touching me. Then she'd be gone. Blood draining from her now-corpse, smile deadened flat and eyes that lost the shine they once held so easily.

Another day, she'd be tortured. It would be slow and brutal, and she'd scream my name. She'd ask why I wasn't helping her, but I never could. In those days, I could feel reality kick in, my body pushing against the straps that held me down, my own voice screaming out her name. But she'd always look at me, as if I could be doing more. As if I should be. Condemning me, judging me, for leaving her there, being hurt by a mysterious force beyond either of our controls.

I'd grown used to everything about these illusions. It always felt the same and I had to repeat mantras to myself to keep calm and sane afterwards. That I was alive, clearly.

In what could only be described as a cell, I'd had plenty of time to think. I had gone over President Snow's words to me. _Do you know... Do you know what that _girl _has done_...

Did I? Did I know?

What? What had she done?

_I'll find out_...

Find? Find out what?

My questions always trailed, unanswered. But I'd realised that she must be alive. That I wasn't the Victor. That somehow, some of us had survived. I had no idea how many, but some of us had. If I was the Victor, I'd be out there right now, smiling and waving at Capitol crowds with a crown on my head, wanting to die on the inside, knowing that Katniss was dead.

What confirmed to me that I wasn't the only one alive was the screaming. The now-familiar noise of Johanna Masons' screams, muffled through the wall near my head.

They'd go off like clockwork. My drill would happen, the bad doctors would come in. I'd hear her screaming. I'd get injected. I'd be out for the count, subdued by hallucinations and images that rolled underneath my eyelids like movie frames. I'd be back up at around midday, I'd estimate, and it would be silent. I'd get some food dripped into me. Water. I'd hear screaming and I'd get another injection. Later on, a few hours at least, I'd come out of it again, rising from the blackness of the end of my injection nightmares. More food dripping into me, more water. I'd get a toilet break and a hose down if I hadn't been able to hold it in.

After a little while, though, the injections changed. Katniss was no longer being killed, she was being... awful. She wasn't the Katniss I knew.

She was a mutt.


	2. Chapter 2

**PART ONE - ****THE ASHES**

**CHAPTER TWO**

* * *

One morning is different. I'm awaken by the same drill, dull within my sound memory. But I'm not injected. In fact, I'm released.

A ginger woman, an Avox, undoes the buckles on the straps that hold me tightly to the plank bed. She looks at me, wordless. For a second, I compare our pain. I think that mine is worse. I resent the quick simplicity of her pain: a tongue being cut off. Once it was over, it was over.

But then I realise how much more it was than that. They took awake her speech. Her voice. She could never use that again, even if she escaped. Even if she outlived her slavery, her kidnappers, she would be burdened forever by what they took from her. I faced so little in comparison, I thought. I saw fake images, distorted memories, of Katniss. Sometimes, for moments afterwards, I'd be unsure if it was real. If that was the real memory, or... if... what was before was the real memory. What... what _was _before?

I couldn't think very well about it. My head felt foggy, muffled, being stuffed with clouds from the sky.

The Avox leaves the room after she undid me, but quickly returns with something that looks like a chair they'd wheel around the old people in our District. Except this one is fancier, Capitol-style sleekness. Curved metals and shiny chromes on the wheels, reflecting in the fluorescent light. I can't help but notice the added leather buckles, though. I'm about to be strapped in again.

The Avox nods to the chair. I wonder if I could tackle her. Run out the door. She catches my eye, desperation leaking from her pupils into mine. All she wants is my compliance. My compliance means her safety. Besides, how far would I get? To the next doorway, where a Peacekeeper would shoot me down?

Perhaps, I think, being shot down would be a better fate than whatever lies for me when I get into that chair.

Reluctant, I clamber into the wheelchair. The Avox lets out what I think is a sigh, relieved, as she straps my wrists down onto the armchairs. "Thank you," I say. My throat is hoarse and scratchy from not being used and from the lack of water.

She nods, barely looking up as she tightens my ankles down. I have the urge to reach out, touch her ginger hair, just to feel something. To feel someone. I didn't realise how lonely I felt until this moment. The doctors never felt like people, just meer mutts like the ones I saw in my injection nightmares. But this Avox girl was. And right now, I am sure I wish that she could speak to me more than she wishes she could talk.

I get wheeled out of my small room. Before my eyes have the chance to adjust, everything is incredibly bright. When they finally come back to me, I see my old Capitol stylists. And behind them, Portia. My heart swells. Despite her being Capitol, she's familiar. She's Portia.

"Portia," I say.

She smiles, but it's tight. Taut. Something is wrong. I've known something is, obviously, but being faced with it is harder. You can't run away.

"Hello," she says, her usually bright voice so dim. "We're going to make you look _fabulous_, aren't we?"

She turns around to my three stylists, but they stay quiet. Their faces are pale. Even for Capitol standards. And I've seen some people here walk around with chalk powder dusted onto their cheeks.

"Why?" I ask. "What's going on?"

Portia looks over her shoulder to the doorway I rolled into. Two heavily armed peacekeepers stand there, gripped to their guns.

"Your interview with Caeser Flickerman, of course," she says as she begins to fiddle around with various beauty implements. "It is very important, Peeta."

"My interview with Caeser? What?"

Scissors in hand, mid-way through clipping my hair, she bores her eyes into mine. "Yes. The entirety of Panem will be watching. Now, hold still for me, OK?"

"Please, please, can you just tell me about Katniss, please, Portia?" I beg. But she doesn't say anything, returning to cutting my hair, pulling it between my fingers to ensure it's even. "_Please_, Portia. I'm begging you, please-"

Suddenly, I feel something in the back of my neck. It's hard and metal. I know without looking that it's a gun. It's a message. Stop asking questions. Stop talking. Stop moving.

For the rest of the makeover, I'm silent. I'm beautified against my will, and probably against theirs, too. When it's finally over, my prep team and Portia stand back from me, in a line, against the wall. The door creaks open and President Snow walks into the room.

Immediately, the atmosphere changes. I feel my body tense, my wrists pulling at the leather buckles even more.

"Hello, Peeta." he says, his snake-like eyes smiling at me. He bends down to my height, grinning, too close, the smell of roses and blood pushing into my face. "You're about to do something very important. And because it's important, I need you to behave and be... be Peeta."

"Be Peeta?" I ask. "What... what... what does that mean? Where's Katniss?"

But he ignores my questions. "You will be the Peeta that my citizens know and love. You will call for a ceasefire."

My mind sprints. Ceasefire? What is he talking about?

"Oh, that's right," he snarls. "No one has told you. Your precious Katniss planned against you. She planned against your nation. She risked your life for it. And now you're here. With us. And you're going to call for a ceasefire."

"Katniss wouldn't... she would never..."

"And yet she did, Peeta," Snow talks in a calm voice, as if he has no real care in this. He reaches for something in his pocket and brings out a slim, remote-like device. He clicks one button and suddenly we are surrounded by the image of Katniss in the arena, in the Quarter Quell.

The room is dark as Snow clicks another button, but I can barely concentrate on him. All I can see is Katniss, large against us. All I can feel is Snow next to me, telling me impossible things.

The image of Katniss comes to life. I watch as she wraps Beetee's wire around an arrow, draws it into her bows quiver and aims straight above her, slightly angled towards the sky. The arrow flies, and hits the arena's forcefield, much like I did back when I was in there. But the arrow doesn't explode, or die, like me. It breaks the forcefield. It alights with the force of the lightning, the wire, the arrow itself.

Pieces begin to rain down, slowly, heavily. The image buzzes, static appearing, before going black, leaving Snow and I in the dark.

My eyes adjust enough to see his mouth, his teeth shining in the darkness. "That is what your precious Katniss did," he says. "And that is why you're going to call for a ceasefire."

"Why? A ceasefire from what? What's happened?" I ask.

"The rebellion."

* * *

I'm dressed in a suit and tie, not unlike the ones I was made to wear during my interview. Portia has dressed me, but her face looks pained. I see a bruise flowering underneath her right eye. My three stylists stood in the corner mostly, often coming over to pluck stray eyebrow hairs like little birds. They behaved as afraid as little birds, too.

"All done," Portia says, stroking down the breast of my velvet jacket. "You look wonderful, Peeta."

I stare her dead in the eye, and try to tell her I'm sorry. I'm sorry for whatever they're doing to her. I'm sorry to what they've done to her friends. But all I say is, "Thank you."

"It's my job," she states.

The look back in her eye tells me she wishes it wasn't. Not anymore. But it's too late. "Portia, I don't understand what's going on," I say. I see her face flash with danger, from the honesty of my words, but I can't stop. She's the only person I trust to be honest with me. "One moment I'm in the Games, I'm in the arena and the next I'm in... a Capitol jail, and I'm seeing all these nightmares..."

A Peacekeeper comes into my peripheral vision. A baton in his hand, dark black, contrasting against the stark white of his uniform.

"Please, Portia, tell me-"

"They're rebelling. Katniss. The districts. The war. It's-"

And that's when the Peacekeeper grabs her. He whacks her with the baton and she screams out in pain, in terror. He begins to drag her by her blonde and pink frizz of hair until she's on the floor, her skin rubbing against the marble. My stylists begin screaming too, begging for the Peacekeeper to stop, but more come. More and more. A whole miniature squad of them. Two for each of them, grabbing them by the arms. Then, I feel one behind me, grabbing my arms, twisting them so hard I'm almost sure they're going to come out of the sockets.

"Careful of his face," I hear one of them say. "Wouldn't want to mark it up before the big interview."

A small round of laughter ensues, muffled from the masks they all wear. Then, it stops. And the Peacekeepers break the necks of my stylists. Immediately, they're dead. I want to cry. I want to scream. But I'm silent. I'm motionless. I look over to Portia, who stares back at me, filled with terror, before they break her neck too.

I don't have any time to process before the two holding me begin marching me toward a robed entrance that I know to belong to the interview stage of Caeser Flickerman. My heart is beating fast, the images of their bodies turning so easily lifeless.

I can't control my brain, flickering with flitting thoughts, endless images of Portia... my stylists... but I'm on stage. I've been released by the two Peacekeepers who were holding me, my arms aching in their sockets. In front of me is Caeser Flickerman, but I can tell the cameras aren't on yet because he's hunched over, tapping away on a little device in his hands.

He looks up, noticing my presence. "Ah, Peeta," he says. "Are you ready?"

My mouth hovers, wanting to scream, _how could they_? And _why_?

But I'm starting to understand. How they could. Why they did. Portia told me, so easily, before they killed her. The districts were rebelling. What Katniss feared, what President Snow feared, was happening.

And they'd left me here. Or they couldn't rescue me.

I wasn't sure what was true.

"Peeta, we need you to be ready," Caeser speaks again.

He beckons me over, and it's all I can but to fall into the seat next to him. I remember it well, my body fitting into it easily despite only ever sitting in it twice. It's comfortable, so comfortable, compared to the bed in my prison cell.

"Are you ready?" he asks. When I don't say anything, he lowers his voice and pulls me into him gently. "The easier this is, the better your time here is, OK? Remember that, Peeta."

Caeser's eyes were sympathetic as he pulled away from me, but the threat was there. The threat was always there.

Suddenly, the lights came on, bright as the sun. I wonder how I ever got through the interviews like this, with them beaming down on me so hard. A sweat breaks out on my forehead, and my immediate thought is that I wish Portia put some more of the powder on me that kept me from sweating. Then I remember. Her lifeless body, the giant snap of her spine.

"So... Peeta... welcome back," Caeser says. His voice has changed, is more demanding and open, ready for the camera. He sits more comfortably in his chair, not a care in the world.

I try to speak. I picture more people I love dead doing it. My family. My brothers. My father. Katniss. I picture the Capitol killing them the same way they killed Portia and my stylists, and my voice finds its way to me. I even manage to smile. "I bet you'd thought you'd seen the last of me, Caeser."

"I confess, I did," he says. The easiness in his demeanor is back to me, that faux camaraderie coming so easily. No wonder he was the perfect choice, to prime the children to the audience. Send them to their deaths. "The night before the Quarter Quell... well, who ever thought we'd see you again?"

"It wasn't part of my plan, that's for sure," I say. I frown when I think about it.

A _rebellion_? The districts... are fighting back? Was this all planned? What did Katniss know, when she flew that arrow into the forcefield?

What are the Capitol going to do to her?

And how can I protect her? Now? Here?

Caeser leans in a little. "I think it was clear to all of us what your plan was. To sacrifice yourself in the arena so that Katniss Everdeen and your child could survive."

Our child... My bombshell, the lie. The thing I really thought might end the Games, might put a stop to the Quarter Quell. Enrage the Capitol citizens so much they'd have to pull the trigger on the Games. But I should've known who I was dealing with. People who enjoy watching twenty-four children fight to the death, peril against the odds, killing themselves in the process...

"That was it," I say. I look down, hope the audience can't see my lies. I don't feel like Peeta, the one Snow requested I be. The good liar. The bombshell-dropper. I begin to trace the paisley pattern on the armchair. "Clear and simple. But other people had plans as well."

I feel myself frowning deeply. There must be awful lines under my forehead, bags under my eyes. What must I look like, to the people who doted on me so carefully?

For a moment, I realise, stupidly, that Katniss must be watching. If Snow wants me to call for a ceasefire, then this is airing in the districts. I was an idiot not to realise it before. I resist the urge to look straight into the cameras, be blinded by the stage lights, as a way to look to her. Katniss.

Did she lie to me? Did she know any of this? Or were we just... played with? It feels like the last bit. I can't imagine Katniss wouldn't have told me if she'd have known. She begged me to break the alliance with Finnick and the rest in the arena. She never even wanted to be involved with Beetee's plan. There was no way she could've known.

We were just... pawns. In the rebel's games.

"Why don't you tell us about the last night in the arena?" Caeser suggests, bringing me back to the present. I want to pinch myself deeply. Turn my pink skin white. None of this can be real. "Help us sort a few things out."

I nod, but the words don't come out easily. I'm too full of rage, at the idea of Haymitch, at the idea of all of them, because who knows how many knew about this plan, using us all. "That last night...to tell you about that last night...well, first of all, you have to imagine how it felt in the arena. It was like being an insect trapped under a bowl filled with steaming air. And all around you, jungle...green and alive and ticking. That giant clock ticking away your life. Every hour promising some new horror. You have to imagine that in the past two days, sixteen people have died-some of them defending you. At the rate things are going, the last eight will be dead by morning. Save one. The victor. And your plan is that it won't be you."

I feel Caeser bristle next to me, wanting to speak, to interrupt, but my mind is painting a picture. I feel the anger so deeply, and all I want is to reach for a paintbrush. But they won't give me one in the Capitol. So I have to use my words.

"Once you're in the arena, the rest of the world becomes very distant," I continues. "All the people and things you loved or cared about almost cease to exist. The pink sky and the monsters in the jungle and the tributes who want your blood become your final reality, the only one that ever mattered. As bad as it makes you feel, you're going to have to do some killing, because in the arena, you only get one wish. And it's very costly."

"It costs your life," says Caesar.

"Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people?" I say. "It costs everything you are."

"Everything you are," repeats Caesar quietly.

"You were too caught up in Beetee's plan to electrify the salt lake," says Caesar.

"Too busy playing allies with the others. I should have never let them separate us!" I burst out, the anger overfilling me. "That's when I lost her."

"When you stayed at the lightning tree, and she and Johanna Mason took the coil of wire down to the water," Caesar clarifies. "I didn't want to!"

I feel myself flush in agitation, my cheeks growing hot. The sweat on my forehead is increasing under the bright lights and the pressure of the conversation, the ideas bubbling over. What was happening in the districts that I didn't know, that I couldn't control. "But I couldn't argue with Beetee without indicating we were about to break away from the alliance. When that wire was cut, everything just went insane. I can only remember bits and pieces. Trying to find her. Watching Brutus kill Chaff. Killing Brutus myself. I know she was calling my name. Then the lightning bolt hit the tree, and the force field around the arena...blew out."

"Katniss blew it out, Peeta," says Caesar. "You've seen the footage."

_No_, I think. I can't let them think that. It doesn't matter how the rebels are playing her. As their icon, their martyr. A war against the Capitol? We wouldn't win it. And when we lose, I can't let them kill her. I can't let them think that she did that. That she was a part of it. "She didn't know what she was doing. None of us could follow Beetee's plan. You can see her trying to figure out what to do with that wire," I snap back.

"All right. It just looks suspicious," says Caesar. "As if she was part of the rebels' plan all along."

I jump to my feet, unable to contain it. Leaning in to Caesar's face, hands locked on the arms of his chair. "Really? And was it part of her plan for Johanna to nearly kill her? For that electric shock to paralyze her? To trigger the bombing?" I yell. "She didn't know, Caesar! Neither of us knew anything except that we were trying to keep each other alive!"

Caesar places his hand on my chest in a gesture that's both self-protective and conciliatory. It grounds me. I feel the weight of my anger in the room. I wonder if I'm going to be punished. Or if Katniss will, somehow. "Okay, Peeta, I believe you."

"Okay," I withdraw, leaving Caesar, pulling back my hands and running them through my hair, mussing my carefully styled blond curls. Styled by the dead, dead Portia. I slumps back in my chair, distraught. Her broken neck... All of them...

Caesar waits a moment, studying Peeta. "What about your mentor, Haymitch Abernathy?"

I feel my face hardens at the reminder of him. Of how he could've used us as pawns. Just like the Capitol. "I don't know what Haymitch knew."

"Could he have been part of the conspiracy?" asks Caesar.

"He never mentioned it," I say.

Caesar presses on. "What does your heart tell you?"

"That I shouldn't have trusted him," I say. "That's all."

Caesar pats my shoulder. "We can stop now if you want."

"Was there more to discuss?" I say wryly.

"I was going to ask your thoughts on the war, but if you're too upset..." begins Caesar.

I remember what Snow said. About the ceasefire. "Oh, I'm not too upset to answer that," I takes a deep breath and then look straight into the cameras, trying to ignore the brightness of the lights. My eyes adjust quickly. I think of Katniss, staring into whatever screen she's watching this from. Looking straight into my eyes. "I want everyone watching-whether you're on the Capitol or the rebel side-to stop for just a moment and think about what this war could mean. For human beings. We almost went extinct fighting one another before. Now our numbers are even fewer. Our conditions more tenuous. Is this really what we want to do? Kill ourselves off completely? In the hopes that-what? Some decent species will inherit the smoking remains of the earth?"

"I don't really...I'm not sure I'm following..." says Caesar.

"We can't fight one another, Caesar," I explain. Caeser knows very well what I'm saying. I'm sure he's been briefed all about it. But he has to play dumb. Get the message out there, plain and simple, in my voice, and my voice only. "There won't be enough of us left to keep going. If everybody doesn't lay down their weapons-and I mean, as in very soon-it's all over, anyway."

"So...you're calling for a cease-fire?" Caesar asks.

"Yes. I'm calling for a cease-fire," I say tiredly. "Now why don't we ask the guards to take me back to my quarters so I can build another hundred card houses?"

Caesar turns to the camera. "All right. I think that wraps it up. So back to our regularly scheduled programming."

The lights turn off immediately, the red glow in the camera's eye gone. I feel two sets of hands on me, rough, pulling my arms back the same way they were earlier.

I'm going back to my cell. But I won't be playing card houses. I'll be seeing nightmares.


	3. Chapter 3

**PART ONE - ****THE ASHES**

**CHAPTER THREE**

* * *

It starts again, but now it's worse.

The distorted images, flashing. Flash, flash, flashing. The shininess.

In every single one of them, Katniss is there. She was the star of my dreams back in District 12, my home. She's the star of my nightmares in the Capitol, my hell.

The bad doctors are back, but twice a day now. They inject me with what I can only assume as to be some sort of nasty drug. When I fall asleep, the last hours of the day before my body shuts down, I wonder what it could be. Some different strain of morphling? Some new, muttation of a drug? The only thing it reminds me of is the time in the 74th Hunger Games, my first. When Katniss dropped the trackerjacker nest down on us. The visions I had for what felt like days afterwards.

It wouldn't surprise me, if they're using it as a weapon against me. It's already a weapon, really. But I can't understand what they're doing. And the longer they do it, the foggier my brain becomes. The foggier it all becomes.

When I fall asleep, I start to see Katniss. But she's no longer a source of comfort. There's no longer any Games. No longer is Cato cutting my leg in my sleep. It's only ever Katniss, Katniss, Katniss. And she's bad.

In one dream, she turns into one of the muttation dogs that plagued us at the end of the 74th Hunger Games. I see her jumping up at me, those grey eyes stuck in the wild dog body. Instead of ears, there's one single plait, running down the back of the animal.

I only wake up when she's about to kill me. And sometimes, not even then.

One day, I'm taken out of my cell. The cell has begun to stink in a putrid sense. My own bodily matters that are never cleaned up properly. The smell of my unwashed skin, the endless sweat that pours from my pores during the nightmares and the injections. They take me out, and all I hope is that they clean it, even though I'm somewhat starting to get used to my own putrid smell.

They give me buttered bread, still hot from whatever oven it came from, and a slab of thick brown meat. I'm not sure what it is, but I don't ask. I can't ask. Who would answer?

One of my hands is let free by a silent Avox, with Peacekeepers tightly holding guns in every corner and direction I can see. I start to eat the food like the rabid wild dog Katniss from my nightmares. They sure like to starve us out in these cages. Most of the time, I'm not hungry enough to eat, too weak and nauseated from whatever they inject into me that makes me hallucinate all day. But today they've skipped the injections, and I'm being given some warm and actually tasty. It beats the moulded bread and dry grains they usually give me by a long shot.

"Enjoy that, lover boy?"

My arm hairs bristle at the nickname, coined by the Career pack in the 74th Hunger Games. I'm only slightly relieved when I see that it actually comes from Johanna Mason, but my relief is short lived when I see what she looks like. Her hair is completely shaved. There are small nicks and cuts all across her visible body. She's strapped into a wheelchair, so I assume she can't walk for some reason. Too weak, maybe. She does look thin. She was thin before, but this is skeletal. District Twelve levels of skinniness.

"Stop looking at me like that," she says. "You're no picture yourself."

I can only imagine. They won't give me a mirror. There is no point to it, if they can't torture me with it, I guess.

"What's on the menu today, hmm? Oh, lovely," Johanna says. I like to see that her spirit, that sarcasm and wit, hasn't been beaten out of her. Yet.

"Why are we in here?" I say. My voice is hoarse, dry. I reach for the small cup of water, swish it around my mouth and throat, and hope it helps, but it's likely because I haven't spoken in... weeks, maybe. Time feels differently here.

"I'm guessing they're here because they can't work out if I know anything about the rebellion or not," she says before biting into her buttered roll and letting out a little moan of pleasure. I'm sure the menu in her room is no better than my moulded bread and dry grains, either.

"Do you?" I ask. "Know anything?"

"You think I'd tell you, lover boy?" she barks out a laugh. "Have they worked out that you know nothing yet?"

My eyebrows furrow. "I don't know," I admit.

"Then they have," she says. "You'd know if they thought you knew something. Trust me."

"Oh," I mutter. "I... I'm sorry."

She just shrugs in response, eating the rest of her bread roll in one bite. "Whatever."

I look down at my food. I wonder what could've caused them to give me something finer today. What they must have in store for me, for both of us perhaps, soon. Or whether it's all that Johanna says. If they're just trying to make me get something out of her that they can't. They'd be stupid to think she'd talk to me, though.

"Johanna?" I say.

She mumbles something, ripping the meat with her teeth hungrily.

"If you did know anything about the rebels, and you didn't tell me, or you didn't tell Katniss..." I start. "Then I'll never forgive you. For using me. Like a piece in a game."

Johanna looks up, surprised at my words. She even stops chewing her food. "Why?"

"Because you'd be just like them."

We eat the rest of our food in silence and they take us back to our cells. This is how I find out that Johanna is in the room next door to me. This is how I realise that the screams I hear every night, have been hers.


	4. Chapter 4

**PART ONE - ****THE ASHES**

**CHAPTER FOUR**

* * *

The drilling wakes me, as it always does. My routine is the only thing I know anymore.

My memories feel like they're being squished, every day. I wake to the drill, eat my bread. It's nothing like the bread we'd make at home. It's nothing like the district bread I got in the arena. After I eat it, the tasteless stuff turning to mush in my mouth, I'm greeted by the white-clad doctors. They inject me with the _stuff_. I don't know what to call it. I still can't understand what it is. It comes in clear through the white injection tubes, and I spend hours having nightmare-esque hallucinations for hours afterwards. At some point, they stop. Let me breathe. Maybe they're worried they'll kill me. They let me drink a gallon of water, and then they inject me again. I hear the screams coming from next door. They're the soundtrack as I slip into another world, where Katniss is a muttation who kills my father, my brothers. Kills everything good in my world.

One day, I'm not given my afternoon injection. Instead of white-clad doctors, I'm greeted by President Snow himself. He grins, but my mind is still addled by the morning injection. He is hazy, and his eyes almost look exactly like a snake. For a moment in my mind, they **are** snake's eyes. I feel my heart race.

"Hello, again, Peeta," he says.

My mouth opens and closes, flustered, but unable to speak past what feels like a stone in my throat.

Snow holds a hand up, stopping the speech that was never going to come anyway. "Don't," he commands. "You're doing very well. With your... treatment."

He walks around me. I'm still stuck to my bed, the hard rock of a thing. He slithers past me, and I think I can see his tongue come out of his mouth. A memory flashes through me, stricken with silver streaks, shining bright. It's Snow, and Katniss, plotting together. Doing something... but I can't quite reach it...

"I have something to show you," Snow continues talking. "That may help your treatment on a little bit."

I watch as he takes out the same remote like device that he did... was it weeks ago? Days ago? I can't tell. My head won't let me scan through the days, they've all blurred into one nothingness.

Snow clicks a button on the remote and an image appears on my cell wall. It's District 12, my home. It goes through the streets behind the Merchant village. I see my families bakery for a second. The town square, with the crumbling Justice Building. My heart hurts, with the reminder of home. Of how far away I am from it now. Of how far away I've been for so, so long. I see the coal-ridden Seam, shack-like houses that Katniss lived in for the first sixteen years of her life.

My brain hurts at the thought of her. She lives in every nook and cranny of my memories, but now, for some reason, it's starting to hurt when I think of her.

Then, on my wall, I watch as 12 turns to flames. There are planes with images of a mockingjay on them, sending bombs down. I hear screaming, but I don't know if it's in my mind or from the footage.

_The rebels_? I think. _The rebels bombed my home_?

It doesn't make sense to me. Are the Capitol playing tricks on me? What... why would they? Why _wouldn't_ they?

It can't be real. I'm almost convinced that somehow they've made these fakes images and are hurting me with them. But then I see her. In my jail, light up against the wall.

Katniss.

She's in the planes. She's sending down the bombs. She's... destroying District Twelve.

I watch as she cackles, a pure evil sound in her mouth. She turns to face whatever is being used to film her and smiles. Her eyes are like a snakes.


	5. Chapter 5

**PART ONE - ****THE ASHES**

**CHAPTER FIVE**

* * *

Caeser Flickerman has requested me back. And this time, I'm sure it's not for my winning personality.

When a strange Capitol woman dresses me in the same suit they used last time, it's baggier and doesn't fit me right, but she doesn't bother to adjust it. She just tightens my belt, tells me my pants won't fall down now.

I feel frail and weak, and my weight loss reflects it. I don't pass any mirrors as I'm escorted by Peacekeepers back to the stage where Caeser will interview me, but I can be sure how awful I look. When I get there, the cameras and lights off, even Caeser seems to be taken aback my deteriorated state.

"Peeta," is all he has time to say, before the camera and the oh-so blinding lights turn back on.

The last thing that I can remember well, that isn't shiny or mixed up with nightmarish things, are those lights, and how difficult it is to see anything through them. I focus my eyes on Caeser, and try not to let the swimming, blurry dots in my own eyes take over me.

"So, Peeta, welcome back," Caeser says, already ready for the camera, assuming a whole different face in just a few seconds. "We haven't seen you in a while, but we are just _desperate _to talk to you."

"The feelings mutual," I mutter.

Caeser seems to take this as easy banter coming back, but there is a pounding beneath my head that proves otherwise. "What do you make of the rumours that Katniss Everdeen is making propos for the rebel cause in the districts?"

I look around. I can't see anything but the cameras and the lights, and Caeser at the side of me, his hair now magenta instead of the blue I once knew it. Is that real? I'm not sure.

Is what he says real? Is Katniss involved in with the rebels? The rebels who blew up my home, my district? No. Peeta, that wasn't real. Rememeber? It was the Capitol who did that. Or it was fake.

But didn't I see Katniss, blowing up District 12, with rebel ships?

_No! _She wouldn't do that! Not Katniss! Katniss would never hurt District 12.

I tell myself this. That it wasn't real. That Katniss wouldn't do that. That the rebels... they're using her. Like a piece in a game. A piece in a game...

"They're using her, obviously," I say at last. "To whip up the rebels. I doubt she even really knows what's going on in the war. What's at stake."

"Is there anything you'd like to tell her?" asks Caesar.

_Is there anything I'd like to tell her_?

I can't think. It feels like my head is full of cotton wool, stuffed to the brim. The white, fluffy stuff should be falling out of my ears. I tentatively place a hand to my head, to check, but there's nothing. It's not real. Or maybe it is.

I don't know what's real, and what's not.

But there is something I would like to tell her. There's so much I want to tell her.

But right now? I need to tell her what the Capitol wants me to tell her. Because I don't know if the Capitol or the rebels or Katniss herself blew up 12. But if I don't say what they want me to say, then they might. They might just go ahead and blow it up.

"There is," I say. I looks directly into the camera, right into Katniss' eyes. "Don't be a fool, Katniss. Think for yourself. They've turned you into a weapon that could be instrumental in the destruction of humanity. If you've got any real influence, use it to put the brakes on this thing."

I'm thinking of what I saw. The injections, the shininess. Snow, his snake eyes, and Katniss, blowing up 12 with her own snake eyes...

"Use it to stop the war before it's too yourself, do you really trust the people you're working with?" I continue.

And then I think of how the rebels are using her as a pawn in their own Games. Just like the Capitol is using me. I need to tell her... I need a way...

So I say, "Do you really know what's going on? And if you don't... find out."


	6. Chapter 6

**PART ONE - ****THE ASHES**

**CHAPTER SIX**

* * *

It feels like all I am is the liquid they put inside me.

I'm a vessel. I'm the tube they inject me with. I'm not a person anymore. I'm just... I'm...

I'm not real. Am I?

The days, or maybe it's weeks, pass by in a haze of my new regime. Drill, bread, doctors, injection. Water, doctors, injection, grains. Fitful sleep, and repeat. However, when I wake this morning I'm left alone, no one comes to hurt me. My vision is somewhat clearer, my hearing not fuzzy. But when I think of Katniss, I feel so much anger, conflicted with a small voice in the back of my head. Today, without the injection, the voice in the back of my head is stronger at least. It still fights, though, against the shining things that tell me Katniss, the muttation version of her, bombed my home. Killed my family.

I get picked up by two Peacekeepers, as usual, into the same dining room I ate lunch with Johanna a few days ago, but this time there's a strange girl in here. I've never met her before, but she doesn't look Capitol. Too plain, no colour injected into her skin, and her ginger hair seems perfectly natural. But she looks familiar, somehow.

That's when I place her. She's a victor... of the 70th Hunger Games, I think. Annie something...

"Annie Cresta," she says. Her voice is so quiet that I can barely hear her. It's only that I half recognise her name that I'm able to hear her.

"Can I please get closer?" I ask one of the Peacekeepers who is holding me. He grunts, which I'm not sure is a yes or a no, but it must be a yes as he drags me toward a plain white chair and straps me in. An Avox comes in and places a tray in front of me and places a similar meal to that I had last time I was in this room. Some sort of strange meat and hot, warm, buttered bread.

Annie is now across from me, so I can hear her better, but she's nothing else since her name. Another Avox gives Annie the same meal as mine. I watch as her green eyes follow the toungeless servant. She begins to shake violently, squeezing her eyes against the thoughts in her head. I have an impulse to touch her, to sooth her. But I can barely move my hands enough to reach my bread and put it in my mouth, let alone to comfort Annie Cresta, so I ask her if she's OK instead.

For a moment, she doesn't respond, but I see her hands, clamped over her ears, loosen.

"It's OK, Annie," I say. "I sometimes feel that way, too."

I don't know if she can hear me, and I've never even met her, but it feels right to say to her. I almost can't believe how good it feels to see someone that I don't know. Someone that isn't Capitol, isn't trying to hurt me, whether it's real or in my nightmares.

Slowly, she lets go of her ears. I wonder if she recognises the Avox, or whether it's just the Avox existing in general, but I decide not to ask. I don't want her to slip away again. I know all too well what it's like to slip like that.

"This food is nicer," I say, after a few moments.

Annie fiddles with the bread roll, picking bits off it, breadcrumbs falling into her fingers. "It's not as good as the stuff in Four," she replies.

"Yeah, I bet," I say. I feel a smile come to me, and it's real. Human conversation has alluded me for too, too long. "They bake it with seaweed, right?"

"Yes," Annie replies. She looks up at me, her eyes bright. "How did you know?"

"I used to... my parents, they... in 12..."

Annie recognises the way my voice is trailing, the same way I recognised her slipping away from me. She sees me breaking. "I remember," she says, cutting me off, before I slip too far. "You bake. You bake bread?"

I nod. I bite into the bread. It grounds me; the butter slipping over my tongue. "I learnt all about the different types in the districts from my father," I tell her. "District 4: tinted green from the seaweed. Fresh sea salt cracked on top."

"If you have it," Annie says, and I understand the sentiment all too well. People assumed that because I grew up in the merchants village, we never wanted for anything. Sure, we had it better than so many. Than the kids in the Seam. Than Katniss. But we still wanted. We still needed.

"Well, it sounds amazing," I tell her. "But this is what we have. And it's better than the other stuff they give us."

"I suppose so," Annie agrees. She suddenly shakes her head, as if trying to fight a thought, but she clings onto reality. "I don't like it here, Peeta. Why have they brought us out here? Why are they feeding us this?"

"I don't know," I admit. I look over at the Peacekeepers, guarding us. They're masked, but listening. But what are they going to do? What worse could they do? "They brought me here like this with Johanna. She told me they were trying to see if I could get anything out of her about the rebellion. Maybe they're doing the same now."

Annie hums. "I don't know anything," she says. "They hurt me. Over and over. But I don't know anything."

"Me either," I say. "I think they didn't tell us anything on purpose."

"What?"

I eat more of my bread roll, trying to savour it, bite by bite. I don't know when I'll get food like this again. "It's just a theory," I try to backtrack. "I've... had a lot of time to think, I guess. About the rebels. What they're doing. What _they_-" I nod toward the Peacekeepers, the Capitol in general, "-tell us. I... think some of them knew about it. Maybe Finnick didn't tell you anything on purpose. He knew they'd take you. He used you as a pawn in his rebel games, and now the Capitol are using you as a pawn in their games. Again, really."

Annie places her hands over her ears tightly and starts muttering under her breath. I feel my chest cave in at the idea of hurting her, but at the same time, I don't think I was wrong. I _have_ had plenty of time to think between endless injections of the nightmare liquid. I talked to Johanna and Caeser... and it's what I believe.

When I look up again, after being invested in my thoughts so heavily, Annie has taken her hands off her head and is looking at me, razor sharp and clear. "No," she says. "No. Finnick wouldn't do that. He wouldn't _use_ me. He loves me. I don't... I don't know what they've told you, Peeta, but you love Katniss. Would you ever use her? Like a piece in a game?"

"No," I say, before I can even think about it. Before I can think that I love Katniss. I do love her, right?

I do...

I think...

Annie is nodding, unaware of what I'm wondering. "You see," she continues. "We love them, and we'd never use them. They love us, Peeta. I don't know anything about the rebels, or what's going on back home... Or in the Capitol... But they love us. And that means they wouldn't use us like a piece in a game. They wouldn't use us like the Capitol."

I try to nod back at her. I try to say something, but I can't.

Because while I believe her that if you love someone, you wouldn't use us like a piece in a game... I don't believe her that Katniss loves me.


	7. Chapter 7

**PART ONE - ****THE ASHES**

**CHAPTER SEVEN**

* * *

I think they've been injecting me more.

I don't mean more often. The routine is still the same, with my morning and afternoon doses. But I think they've been giving me more of it.

The nightmares are getting worse. Katniss is in every single one of them now, the complete and only star.

She's in the Games, cutting my instead of Cato. It was Cato, who cut me, right? I can't remember. I'm not sure. In the nightmares, it's Katniss.

She's the muttation clawing at me at the cornucopia. Her grey Seam eyes in the body of a wild dog, plait for ears, folding down her back. But it wasn't her, who was a muttation... I think. It was the other tributes. But the Capitol made them, right? I don't know.

She's bombing District 12, snake eyes and grinning mouth, happy at the burning bodies below. Killing my family. In the rebel ship. Or maybe it's a Capitol ship, disguised to trick me. Why would they want to trick me, though? Why does it look so real, when Katniss is bombing the district?

It all is becoming too blurry. Too blurry to separate...

* * *

When they need me, they don't inject me. It's time for another lunch, which means I have more fellow captors than just Johanna, who's screams still haunt me, and Annie Cresta. I feel fear who whoever is trapped in here, in these Capitol jails, with me. Who else has been screaming.

But when I'm taken into the same dining room, it's Enobaria. The female tribute from District 2, from the Quarter Quell. She smiles at me, her sharpened teeth glinting too brightly. It's almost shiny, and my immediate fight-or-flight reaction kicks in. I'm only used to that kind of shininess in the injected nightmares.

I'm place on the same table as her, sitting across from each other. The same food of questionable meat and fresh buttered bread is placed in front of me. Enobaria gets the same. She doesn't anything. Just smiles.

As I begin to eat, chewing slowly through the food that I now have no appetite for, I notice that Enobaria doesn't look so bad. Her face is unflowered of bruises, her face relatively full compared to how I remember it at the start of the Quarter Quell. I wonder what they've been doing to her, or the lack of what they've been doing to her. Being in District 2 pays, it seems. Capitol lapdogs through and through, even when they've locked you in a jail and are torturing your neighbours.

We eat, not saying anything. I wonder if Johanna has had to sit and eat a lunch with Enobaria. I suddenly find myself wishing that I could've been there for it, just to watch Johanna to joke on Enobaria. Then, the wanting washes away, clouded by nightmarish visions.

As I'm chewing through the meat, I hear a buzzing go off somewhere in the distance. A corridor that I've never been allowed to venture down. Not that I've been anywhere, other than this white and depressing room, and my jail cell.

Then, a beeping, but it's closer. In this very room. I look at Enobaria, raise my eyebrows, but she essentially growls at me as she bites into her meat, and regret my looking over. I turn around, as far as my restrained neck will let me, and see that the beeping is coming from the Peacekeepers outfits. Some sort of communication watch, or chip? Whatever it is, they're all going off.

I watch, trying not to make it too obvious now I know where it's coming from. Even in my addled state, still fuzzy from the amount they're injecting me with twice a day, I know that neither Enobaria or I should be around to be witnessing this. I try to focus my attention on the slab of meat, chewing it methodically, trying to look like a hungry captor.

"It must be that thing about 13," one of them said, his voice low, but enough for me to hear.

_13_? As in District 13? No. There was no way. It was dead. Crushed. Bombed out, years and years ago, in the original war. For being the head of the rebel riots. It didn't make sense.

"Yeah," another one replied. "Hope they bomb it down to ashes."

What? Bombing 13?

"Shoulda got it done seventy-five years ago."

"Mhm. You can say that again."

I get taken back to my cell as soon as I'm finished eating, but all I can think is that 13 is still alive. When they bombed it seventy five years ago, they failed. Somehow they failed.

Somehow 13 is still alive and thriving and they're going to bomb it again.

Is that where the rebels are holed up now? Again? It dawns on me that this, the war, is really happening. That the districts are fighting back. And 13 is the head of it, likely. Still making those weapons like they used to, years and years ago. Holding them over the Capitol's head...

But if 13 is where the heart of the rebel war lies, then that's where Katniss is. That's where Haymitch and the rest of the rebel leaders have taken them.

13\. Katniss is in 13.

And they're going to bomb it.


	8. Chapter 8

**PART ONE - THE ASHES**

**CHAPTER EIGHT**

* * *

"I want to talk to Katniss."

I keep saying it. I say it as they take me away from Enobaria at the end of our silent lunch. I say it when I get back to my jail cell. I say it when the doctors come in the morning. I say it when they inject it. At lunch, at my afternoon injection, at the time when I'm supposed to sleep.

"I want to talk to Katniss, I want to talk to Katniss, I want to talk to Katniss..." it finishes with me screaming it. I think I'm going crazy, but I can hear Johanna screaming back at me.

Eventually, Snow comes. He comes into my cell, infusing it with the cloying smell of rose perfume and blood. I'm not sure if the blood is his or my own. One of the doctors hit me in the face, square into my eye, a fist, to make me stop asking. It didn't work.

Snow has barely set a foot into my cell when I say it again, "I want to talk to Katniss."

"Why?" is all he says back. His snake-like eyes are observing me. Trying to analyse me.

Why does he think? I love her. He probably doesn't know that I heard the Peacekeepers. He doesn't know that I want to warn her. To warn all of them. Even if they used me as a pawn, used us both... I don't want them to bomb 13. What was the point of me calling for a ceasefire? I wonder if 13 have fired. Or if the Capitol are throwing the first punch.

"I want to tell her that... that she can't do this," I say. I lie. "That she can't work with the rebels."

"Why, Peeta? Do you still love her?" Snow asks.

_Do I still love her_? What sort of a question?

I conjure her up in my mind. Lately it has been difficult to think of her. The memories of her, so cemented in my minds eye, have become washed and mixed with the nightmares from the Capitol injections. But she's still there, I try to tell myself at night. She's not a nightmare. She's not a mutt.

Isn't she?

Yes... Yes.

I think.

"Yes," I tell Snow. "Yes, I still love her."

His face hardens. I can tell this wasn't the right answer, but he agrees to let me talk to Katniss. He tells me that Caeser will see me tonight.

My stomach twists. Because if they're letting me do it, Snow definitely doesn't know that I overheard the Peacekeepers, and know of the Capitol plot to bomb 13.

And that means I have to warn 13. Live on Capitol TV.

* * *

My face is heavily powdered, but I don't think it can cover the bruise on my eye from the punch. It hurts as they place it on me, each swipe like a miniature hit, making it swell even more under the make-up. I imagine the bags under my eyes from not sleeping at night, just screaming to speak to Katniss, are even worse than before.

When she sees me, she's going to be shocked.

But, a horrible voice inside of me tells me that she won't care. That she's a rabid Capitol mutt who burnt my district down the ground and tried to rip me apart as a wild dog at the cornucopia and...

_No,_ I try to tell myself. Stay with it, Peeta. Just for this. Just to warn her. _Please,_ I find myself begging with my own mind.

I'm taken over to the interview stage with Caeser, who is already sitting comfortably in his chair. I could swear that the lights here get brighter every time. It's perhaps a side effect of the injections...

"Hello, Peeta," Caeser says. His voice sounds tired, his hair a little less bright than usual. Probably an effect of the districts manufacturing being stopped by rebels. "I hear you have been making a little riot of your own, wanting to talk to Katniss."

"I guess so," I mumble.

Caeser straightens out his magenta pink tie. "Well, I always knew you loved her more."

Loved her more... than she loved me?

My nightmares tell me that's true. My nightmares tell me she didn't love me at all...

_Peeta, stay! Stay here! _Think of Katniss.

No, don't think of her. The nightmares will come back. Just think of what're you're going to say to her, what you're going to warn everyone in 13. The bombing. Think of that.

The camera lights turn to red, letting me know we're live in the Capitol. Caeser begins introducing me, saying I have an important message for Katniss Everdeen and the rebels.

"Yes, Caeser," I say. My voice is hard, cold and frustrated, my mind wandering between my nightmares and the endless notion that both Katniss and I have been pawns in rebel and Capitol games. "I am once again calling for a ceasefire."

"A ceasefire," Caeser says. "Tell me more."

I think about Snow watching. What he'd want me to say. What he may reward me with, like a dog, or something, for saying something he likes. "We need it. There has been so much damage to key infrastructure," I say. It's all a guess, but looking at Caeser's hair, it's easy to guess that there's been issues in production. "All down to rebel action.

Then, without warning, the camera light turns off. The shining lights have stopped blinding me. Caeser and I are in the dark, apart from the Capitol televisions that are placed on the back walls behind the cameras. Normally, they're just like looking into a mirror, except I avoid looking at myself as I speak. Focus on Caeser. But now on the televisions is the seal of the mockingjay. The rebels, I think.

Katniss is standing in a rubble. Right by the bakery. My home.

That she burnt to the ground, the nightmares say.

No. No...

Then, the lights are back on, the red light blinking, my face, confused on the television screens, looking back at me. The rebels. Katniss. They're interrupting the television feeds.

She's there right now, I realise. My face turns into a mix of emotions, from the flashing nightmares to the need to tell her about the bombing.

The lights go back off as the rebels fight for power of broadcasting on the televisions. I see Finnick. He's talking about Rue. Little Rue from the 74th Hunger Games. Rue, who I painted in flowers in my session with the Gamemakers during the Quarter Quell.

Little Rue who Katniss actually placed flowers all around... She can't be a mutt. Mutts don't do that...

But she is a mutt. She is.

No...

The Capitol and the rebels fight for the broadcast, my face flashing back at me on and off, as quickly as my thoughts race from thinking Katniss is a mutt and isn't a mutt. Eventually, the Capitol seem to grab back the connection. I'm stable, on the screen, looking awful. But this is the perfect time to tell the rebels about the bombing on 13. I know for sure that they're watching.

"Katniss...how do you think this will end? What will be left? No one is safe. Not in the Capitol. Not in the you...in Thirteen..." I inhales sharply, as if fighting for air. I look straight into the television screens and see that my eyes eyes look insane. "Dead by morning!"

I hear Snow's voice, demanding that they "End it!", but it's not in time for me to catch another flash of the rebels fighting back for the television feed.

The next thing I feel is a fist landing straight into the side of my head. And then, nothing.


	9. Chapter 9

**PART TWO - THE ASSAULT **

**CHAPTER NINE**

* * *

The days start bleeding.

Where I was confused before, I'm not anymore. Where I wondered if Katniss was a muttation wild dog in the Games, if she was a snake that burnt down my home, District 12... I no longer wonder. I just know.

When I wake up and I'm injected with the clear fluid, my new memories are just as clear. They shine, brightly, but they become interlocked with the memories that were stuck in my head before. I can't separate them anymore. I can't fight them anymore. I have no fight left within me. I am wet, yet ringed out, my sanity dripping out of me.

She is everywhere. She screams over me, during the injection nightmares and when they're finished.

I am... nothing. I am not Peeta. I am something else with the belief, the pure belief, that she's a mutt.

I go through weeks of this, relentless. I feel my ribcage growing out of my skin as I get slimmer and slimmer, crazier and crazier. Everyday, I am asked, "Do you love Katniss?"

And when I answer yes, I am hurt. A masked doctor, a Peacekeeper, even Snow himself sometimes, will hit me. Anywhere. They'll cut me if I'm particularly insistent.

So, eventually I say no. I tell them I don't love Katniss.

And then one day, I truly don't love her. I don't have to lie. I don't love Katniss. Not anymore.

How could I love a mutt?

* * *

I wake up late. I can feel it, because not once in my cell have I ever woken up on my volition. I'm always shaken awake by a doctor, or a Peacekeeper every now and then. But today, I feel groggy with oversleeping. There is warm sunlight seeping through the centimetere long window at the top of one of my walls, the only key to the outside. I have always wondered why they put a window in a jail cell. Perhaps the inmates got too mad, without one. Perhaps I would have become insane quicker without it too, without the nights looking out of the window, wondering if Katniss was looking at the same moon.

Wondering if that mutt was looking up at it. It sickens me now. To think I ever pined for her. The girl that ruined me, that ruined my home, that ruined everything.

I realise that something is wrong when I wake up late like this, that morning. But until I'm able to shake the sleep out of my eyes, unable to move my hands much, and let my body adjust to being awake and unmedicated, I don't realise how wrong it is. The lights in my cell are off, there is no humming of the various machines outside and around the building, from wires in the walls. Johanna isn't screaming.

My senses feel on the edge, as if there's a sharp knife being held against the innermost part of my wrist, slipping along the sweat perspiring on the skin. I feel worse than if there were doctors in here now, injecting me with the nightmare serum. At least I know what to expect with it.

I try to shout, loudly. My voice is hoarse from dehydration, but it's loud enough. Yet still, nobody comes. Not even a peep, a crack of the door, or a fellow prisoner trying to scream back to let me know I'm not alone.

I hear nothing.

After a while - it's hard to know how long, how much time passes between these walls - I start to try to call for Johanna, but either she is ignoring me, or can't hear me. I begin to panic, my breathing rapid in my chest. I try to calm myself down by look at the rise and fall of my chest, reminding myself that I am breathing, no matter how much it feels like I'm not. My eyes close against vicious visions of Katniss eating the flesh of my families' charred bones after destroying my district.

I can feel myself muttering, jabbering words that don't make sense. Maybe I'm screaming. My throat feels hoarse. Then, I feel a pair of hands on me, strong and commanding. I twist my head against the restraints and see someone dressed all in black. They look like the anti-Capitol, dressed so starkly against their uniforms of white. I can't see the persons face, as they have on a thick helmet that must weigh a tonne, and a black glass visor. They take an arm off me, and lift up the glass.

That's when I see his face. I recognise him, immediately, but he isn't a mutt. Not like Katniss. He was in none of my nightmares, none of my visions.

It's Gale.

His face is slacken as his eyes lock onto mine. Blue on grey. Just like it was with me and Katniss.

At the fleeting thought of her, I feel my brain go rabid, immediately switching to fight or flight mode. I feel spittle rise against my teeth, the need to bite down on something. Preferably Katniss' flesh. The violent thought shocks me for a moment, before the power of the nightmares take over.

"What... what have they done to you?" Gale is asking me. He looks like a different person, almost. Stronger than he ever did in 12. He must be a rebel.

A rebel... A pawn in a Game... They used me...

Fragmented thoughts keep popping up, but I can't keep track of them. I can't... I can't follow them enough. Pick one, I try to scream at myself. I think I actually scream it, the words leaving my mouth as harsh instruction that make sense to nobody but me. But I can't act upon them. Instead I'm given sharp, jagged images and ideas, flying across my eyes. I bite down hard on my bottom lip as Katniss' snake eyes appear on the wall behind Gale's head. Warm blood starts to seep between my teeth.

"Someone help!" Gale speaks roughly into a plastic-looking intercom attached to his chest. With little delay, another person dressed all in black is next to him.

"What the damn hell is wrong with him?" speaks a voice that I don't recognise. Good. Good, that voice can't hurt me.

I bite harder, but not because I'm still angry. It's had the opposite effect. The blood and the pain seem to have soothed me. I no longer see Katniss' snake eyes on the wall, or in my minds' eye. They're gone. I feel my own thoughts flood back to my head. But gently. Slowly.

I realise, though, that this isn't a good thing. That I've hurt myself, and it made me feel calmer. It's not a good thing at all. I knew a girl, back in 12, her name Kaya, who did that. Who hurt herself. I saw all of the cuts down her arm, like a ladder of pain. I cornered her after school one day, I asked her if she was OK. I didn't know her that well, but I'd spotted it, and I couldn't shake it. I couldn't shake the idea that she was hurting, and I didn't want to ignore that.

She'd told me she was sad. That doing it made her feel better, but asked me not to tell anyone. Especially not her father. I didn't know why she asked, but I abided. I kept an eye on her every day, but she was careful after that. To never let anyone see underneath her sleeves. Then one day, she never showed up to school again. Her father had to come in and tell everyone that Kaya had died.

Everyone around me thought it was starvation. That was the main culprit of death in 12, especially for Seam children, which Kaya was. But I knew differently. I knew that Kaya had taken her own life. That whatever pain she spilled out onto her arms had spilled too far, and she was gone for it. She died from sadness.

I didn't want that to happen to me. I didn't want to die from sadness, like Kaya.

All of a sudden, I bite down on my lip again. The blood fell easily. I didn't want to die from sadness, but I was already panicking, already choosing to hurt myself as a way to calm myself again. I can barely breathe, my chest tight from wanting to explode. Am I breathing? I don't know. I think I'm holding my breath. I... can't tell. I can't remember how to breathe.

"He's... he's going purple..."

"BOGGS!" Gale shouts. They don't care who can hear.

How are they here? How have the rebels infiltrated the Capitol?

The questions are spinning, dancing in mind, but I can feel my body running out of oxygen. I gasp, because my instincts make me. The intake of oxygen, sudden and sharp, keeps me conscious as I hold my breath longer. How do I breathe? How did my body gasp? Why are Katniss' eyes like snakes? Why is she burning down my home?

Another black-clad person enters my jail. They're holding a vial. Clear liquid is inside of it. I begin to feel myself scream, colour flooding back into my face as oxygen is able to come into my body.

The person, Boggs, jams the vial into my arm, but the liquid inside is nothing like what the Capitol inject me with. It's familiar, though. It's like sugar in my blood.

Morphling. Yes. There's some of that. The throbbing in my lip is reduced to nothing, and all I feel is the trickle of warmth as blood drips from the open wound.

But there's something else in it... My eyelids are drooping. It's so familiar. I can taste it, I swear, even though it was injected straight into my veins.

What is it? What is it?

Then, I remember it. So suddenly it comes to me. It comes to me mixed in berries, in a cold cave, while it's raining heavily outside. The pittering, pattering, of raindrops on the stone roof... My hot body, yet the cold I feel down to my bones.

It's sleep syrup. It's sleep syrup, and I'm back in the 74th Hunger Games, with Katniss drugging me.

My last thought before it pulls me under, is that she was trying to kill me.


	10. Chapter 10

**PART TWO - THE ASSAULT**

**CHAPTER TEN**

* * *

Grey, groggy. My limbs are heavier than lead.

Slowly, my eyes open, but it takes me a long time of staring into a grey wall to remember that I'm no longer in my Capitol jail cell. That the rebels, all dressed in black, broke me free. Or at least, I assume they did. It almost looks like I'm in another cell, if it weren't for the fact that my limbs are completely free of restraints.

As the realisation dawns on me that I'm not tied down, for the first time in, what must be weeks, I am upright. I fondle the bare skin of my wrists, massaging the veins and the tendons underneath before moving onto my ankles. My skin feels raw, new, yet somehow still kind of smooth. I choke a small sob down.

No matter what happens, what the rebels do or say, they cannot be as bad as the Capitol. They numbed me with morphling and sleep syrup, they freed me of restraints. And I'm not being awoken by strange doctors giving me horrible injections.

I'm calm. I actually feel calm. And maybe safe. Safe, in the hands of the rebels. It almost makes me laugh.

I only get a few moments of piece before a trio of doctors come in the room, the sight of them making my heart rate spike. I panic for a second, terrifed that I'm still in the Capitol after all, that seeing Gale and the rest of the rebels was all a strange, strange dream. That they've just given me a different jail cell and they're going to inject me again and again and again...

Little visions begin to flower underneath my closed eyelids, shut in panic. Rushing images of Katniss, bombs, snake eyes...

A doctor touches my shoulder and it brings me out. I'm ready to squirm away, to hit this doctor who is touching me now I'm unrestrained, but I realise he is just touching me. He isn't hurting me. Holding me back. Trying to get me to move somewhere. This doctor is just touching me, letting me know that whatever is going on beneath my eyelids will stay there. That I'm not alone.

I open my eyes, look up at this doctor. He places his hand away from me, but my eyes thank him. Thank him for the first piece of kindness in so, so long.

"Hi, Peeta," says one of the other doctors, a woman this time, with dark orange hair. "I'm Dr. Harddgonne, this is Dr. Lipp-" Dr. Harddgonne nods to the doctor who put his hands on me, "-and this is Nurse Gill. We're going to be doing some checks on you."

"Checks?" I ask. I scan the three of them, crowded round me like the birds would when I split apart stale bread and scattered it in our back garden. "Where am I? Is this... Are you the rebels?"

Dr. Lipp smiles at me. When he speaks, his voice is incredibly soft and soothing. I wonder if he's a doctor of the mind. "First: checks, as in we want to see if any of these bruises on your body have caused concussion or any bleeding," he starts. "Second: you're in District 13. And that third question is a little harder to explain, but yes. Let's settle on yes for now."

I had my suspicions, that 13 existed. From everything I'd heard in the Capitol, all the tiny bits of information I could glean. From the images of Katniss burning down 12 in my mind. But knowing it, truly having it confirmed, and being _in it_, felt different.

District 13 is real. It never was blown up. It's been here, all these years. Waiting.

"Why... why did you never help?" is the next question I ask. It barely comes out against the thoughts that are all fighting for control.

Dr. Lipp's brow furrows, in pity or concentration, I can't tell. "We were weakened from the war," he explains. "We barely had food to feed our people. We didn't even know if we were going to live out the year after the war ended."

"But you're so good now. I mean... this room..." I trail off, looking around. All this medical equipment. The way they all look so well-fed, so brightly faced. There are no bags under either of the doctors or nurses eyes. They look happy.

"Yes," Dr. Harddgonne chips in. "But be comforted, Peeta, in knowing that it has taken us a long time to get to this place. To become so self sufficient and stable. When Katniss handed out those berries to you in the arena, of the 74th Hunger Games, we... we thanked our stars. Every one of us in 13 knew it meant something. We knew, finally, we could help. And here we are. Helping."

Dr. Harddgonne continues talking about the hardships of 13, but my brain has caught onto the word 'Katniss'. There is a sudden rage filling my blood, boiling it up so much so that I can feel it bubbling in my veins. I see her, turning into a mutt, like always. The wild dog, plaits as ears. The snake-eyed evil cretin, blowing up 12, killing my family.

I feel spittle leave my mouth. I am beyond angry. I am enraged. I am red, I am blood, I am fire.

The doctors have stopped talking, noticing that something has gone wrong. That I'm not with them anymore. Dr. Lipp is focusing on me, I can feel his eyes, but I can't look at him. Even if I did look at him, I wouldn't see him. I'd only see the mutt, Katniss.

Then, there's a slamming noise. A creak. The doors behind the doctors are opening. Someone's coming in. Fear begins to flow through me: who is it? The Capitol? They've come to take me back, they're here...

But it's worse than that. I push past the doctors, who are crowding me, trying to look into my eyes with a small light to see if I'm reacting to anything other than the images in my head.

They move out of the way of me easily, letting me go by them and turn in time. They see her at the same time as me.

Katniss.

She's here.

The... mutt. The mutt that killed my family, destroyed my district... I think I can see her becoming a snake in my eyes, right now. She's there, holding out her arms, her lips forming my name, "Peeta," as she walks toward me. But she's becoming a snake. No... no, now she's a wild dog. A jabberjay. A beast, a monster. All teeth and eyes.

Then, before I know it, my hands are wrapping around her throat and I'm trying to kill her.


End file.
